Valkyrian home ministry has little to say about Kliegme smuggling case
Valkyrian home minister says investigation is underway
Tove Jakobsdóttir (she/her), Chief politics writer
Tuesday, 19 December 2023
Ravneby — The Valkyrian Ministry of Home Affairs has the resources to conduct investigations thoroughly. Through the National Monitoring Service, the ministry has access to one of the most widespread surveillance systems in the world, with some cities listed in the top 30 for most surveillance cameras per square kilometre. Further, the Valkyrian government goes to great lengths to retain as much footage as possible for historical purposes.
And so, it should not take long for the National Police to retrace the steps of the Valkyrians who Kliegme detained on smuggling charges on 4 December. For the most part, the police just have to verify where a person was at a particular point of time before they can retrace their footsteps before and after the point of verification. However, the central Cordilian nation’s surveillance system is imperfect and can have blindspots in the countryside.
Since the arrests, the National Police have executed search warrants on Grønn’s surveillance footage and financial transactions in Sjávarborg, the city where most of the arrested Valkyrians were last seen before they travelled for Kliegme. At the same time, the police are likely poring through the National Monitoring Service’s (Nasjonal overvåkingstjeneste, NOS) extensive surveillance system to map their movements and interactions.
Despite the vast resources at the Ministry of Home Affairs’ disposal, the National Police and the wider ministry it is part of have publicly said little about the case other than affirming their cooperation with Kliegmean authorities. However, former National Police Director Marcus Rasmussen argues that the national state of emergency invoked due to the threat posed by Svartedauden has the National Police dedicating more resources to the manhunt.
“If there was no Svartedauden, the National Police would likely have already solved the Grønn case, but many members of the police force have been preoccupied with helping in the Svartedauden investigation,” Rasmussen told the VKS, “With all of the problems facing Valkyria right now, a smuggling case beyond our borders is taking a lower priority.”
In the years since legalisation and decriminalisation and a shift in national policing strategies, the National Police’s narcotics control directorate has shrunk in size compared to other police branches. While the directorate continues to arrest people who sell drugs illegally, most Valkyrians who consume recreational drugs now buy from licensed and regulated sellers such as Grønn.
Today, the narcotics control directorate spends more time with officials from the Medicines Authority to ensure that drug companies like Grønn are up-to-date on the certification of their workers and remain in compliance with national drug laws than hunting down drug dealers and users.
On Grønn’s end, the worker cooperative’s president, Karianna Westergaard, has stated that the company has cooperated with both Valkyrian and Kliegmean authorities in the investigation. Westergaard confirmed that Grønn has provided the surveillance footage and financial transactions subject to the Valkyrian National Police’s search warrants. However, since the warrants are limited to Sjávarborg, Grønn has withheld footage and transactions occurring outside of the city.
Westergaard also stated that Grønn is conducting an internal investigation into its inventory. The company conducts monthly audits of its inventory and routinely releases inventory reports for public consumption. According to the reports, Grønn sees shrinkage at a rate of 1.21 per cent in all of its operations. Shrinkage refers to a company’s inventory of items, particularly that which is unaccounted for due to theft, damage, loss, or error.
However, Grønn has experienced an unusual rate of shrinkage in its Sjávarborg warehouses, which has been consistently experiencing shrinkage of at least 1.6 per cent, higher than anywhere else in Valkyria. Despite the discrepancy, the crime rate in Sjávarborg is no more different than other Valkyrian cities.
The abnormally high shrinkage in Grønn’s Sjávarborg warehouses appears to have started in March 2021, growing steadily from 1.18 per cent in February of that year before peaking at 1.79 per cent in May 2022 and remaining over 1.6 per cent ever since. In response to the shrinkage, Grønn closed several of its shops and one of its warehouses in 2022, but the closures did little to change the company’s losses in the city.
Because of the shrinkage Grønn encountered in Sjávarborg, the company hired private investigators to determine the cause, but their findings were inconclusive. The investigators hypothesised that clerical error was to blame for the losses but were unable to verify whether that was the case.
Over three months, the investigators participated in three inventory audits and found that several pallets worth of Grønn products were missing in each audit. They also kept an eye on video surveillance of the Sjávarborg warehouses but did not find anything suspicious in the footage.
The National Police have stated that they will investigate the shrinkage that occurred at the company’s warehouses in Sjávarborg, calling it a “point of interest” in the inquiry.
All the while the investigation continues, Grønn’s operations have been in doubt pending the results of the inquiry. The company has been trying to secure certification to distribute both recreational and medicinal cannabis internationally, but those efforts have been stymied by the Kliegmean smuggling case.
In other news…
- Valkyrian Green Road Initiative on a bumpy start
- Public sentiment divided on Crabrayan refugees
- State of emergency: no arrests made yet after one month
